“Nah, I’m not going to do a surfing lesson. I don’t have that kind of balance.” That was the negative attitude I began with, based on my experience trying to balance on skateboards in the past. They always flew out from under me. Something about that side-to-side balancing on wheels just does not come easily to me.
Andrew, who has surfed before, insisted I would be able to do it. Tina was psyched to try it, and so was Mike. Finally, I decided to take a chance and try it, why not? So what if I fell in the water a lot. Plus, even though I wanted to go on the Medicine Hike and learn about all the plants that have medicinal uses, my feet really really really did not want to do any more hiking any time soon.
When we got to Puerto Viejo we had determined the best day and time to do the surfing lesson would be the next morning, but we had nothing set up in advance. No problem, Dawn knew just who to call, and she set up our lesson with Beto, the local surfing guru from Uruguay with dreadlocks and a completely laid-back vibe. After a brief description of what the lesson included, Mark was in, too, so there were five of us. Read the rest of this entry »



Easily the prettiest wildlife I saw in Costa Rica was the Blue Morhpo butterfly. I did not get a good picture of one, but I selected the image at right because you can see how large these bright blue butterflies are.
